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Se cerchiamo la vera fonte della danza, se ci rivolgiamo alla natura, allora troviamo che la danza del futuro è la danza del passato, la danza dell’eternità, che è stata e che sempre sarà
(Isadora Duncan)
BELLYDANCE & CO.
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“People have asked me why I chose to be a dancer. I did not choose. I was chosen to be a dancer, and with that, you live all your life. „
Martha Graham
In love with performing arts since childhood, Gaia studied piano until secondary school and as a teenager first began with gymnastics then switched to Modern Jazz, Latin, Modern and Hip-Hop dance, while also joining some amateur theatrical experiences. In 2001, the encounter with Oriental dance immediately became a strong passion, which she devoted herself to everyday, turning out to be her profession in 2009 after a long training at the first Belly dance school in Milan (Club Magica). In 2005, she also studied with Aziza Abdul Ridha and her great Egyptian teacher Dr. Mo Geddawi, who she still follows to acquire valuable lessons, professional certifications for teaching and to improve her artistic curriculum based on a strong classic Belly dance technique and education turned into Oriental Fusion style. At the same time, she attended many international dance festivals studying with big stars of the Belly dance panorama.
Traveling and living abroad for several years – Gaia lived in Andalusia for a year and an half after her graduation in “Science of Communications” at the University of Milan in 2005, then she traveled around Europe (Spain, Portugal, France, Netherlands, Sweden, different Balkan countries), South America (Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Chile, Peru and Bolivia) and Asia (Thailand, Laos, Myanmar, Indonesia, India, Nepal, China) – transformed her dance into an expression of what she learned through these wonderful experiences and her style started to be contaminated by Flamenco, Tango, Gypsy, Indian and Asian sounds.
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The meeting with Anasma in 2009 was the starting point for new mergers, ranging from Hip-Hop, Tribal Belly dance and Salsa Fusion to a professional work-training of theatrical Belly dance. In 2010, this brought to the realization of a dance and experimental theater show in Milan, in collaboration with Anasma, Les Soeurs Tribales and many other professionals of international caliber. In the following years, Gaia went twice to Paris to follow a professional path called “Gate to Fusions”, based all on Urban and Modern Fusion, with Anasma and Linda Faoro.
Participating also in many international festivals, she had the opportunity to study with a number of notable artists, including Raqia Hassan, Fifi Abdu, Dina, Jillina, Amir Thaleb Mohamed Shahin, Ansuya, Mohamed El Sayed, Samara Hayat, Mr. Yousri Sharif, Sabah Benziadi, Madame Roxie Rose, Manca Pavli, Munique Neith, Mohamed El Sayed, Sadie Marquiat, Virginia Mendez, Coolena Shakti, Mistri and the Singh’s brothers, just to name a few.
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Interested in the contemporary fusions and Tribal ITS (Improvisational Tribal Style) too, Gaia began a Tribal educational path with Cinzia di Cioccio and Grazia Manetti of Les Soeurs Tribales, the first Italian company and school of Tribal Belly dance. She studied with them for years until 2012, when she officially entered the company starting a longtime collaboration with performances and workshops around the world, always looking for her own personal style between tradition and innovation. Les Soeurs Tribales was in fact an innovating company using the American “Gipsy Caravan ITS” format as well as its own language LST format - a mix of Tribal and other fusion dances, like Urban Modern, Vintage, Glamour, Contemporary and Indian – in order to experiment and create new kinds of dialogue with the body. Gaia studied this great language of Tribal Belly dance with Paulette Rees-Denis (the American founder of the Gipsy Caravan ITS style) and Cinzia, whom she collaborated with until 2016 in the Cigales company, an advanced duet of LST experience. Thanks to Cinzia, Gaia had the opportunity to visit Jakarta and Bali during the Tribal Fest of Indonesia in 2012-13, giving classes, performances and workshops hosted by the great dancer Desi Ardi Susanto.
Les Soeurs Tribales' project stimulated so much Gaia’s interest in Tribal Belly dance that she decided to work abroad with the Amaya Dance Company of Manca Pavli, located in Ljubljana (Slovenia), where she went dancing for a year with her friend Federica Gallo dreaming together of a new project for a big company between Oriental and Tribal Belly dance. Dreams became true when Gaia joined the Foésia Bellydance company.
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Foèsia Bellydance Company was born at the end of 2014, out of an idea of Federica Gallo and Sonia Micaro, professional dancers and longtime friends who started to dance together in 2008, then took different artistic paths but reunited to jointly pursue this ambitious project, both taking care of the art direction and choreography. Foèsia is a professional “tailor-made” company whose goal is to stage an Oriental Dance Show, a great performance perfectly conjugating the two directors' Modern/Fusion inspiration while remaining faithful to and respectful of traditions - fourteen dancers gave their best for two years of shows around the most important theaters in Italy.
At the same time, Gaia continued to teach and dance also as a soloist in many shows and personal projects. In 2017, she moved far from the big city of Milan to live in contact with nature and the seaside near Genoa, spreading her passions in this new place. She founded her personal dance tribe, Mandalance, where she put all her creativity blending Tribal Fusion, Oriental and Contemporary dance, while doing also yoga, Pilates, jogging, swimming, etc. for her personal healthcare. In summer 2017, she attended a professional training for Unmata ITS Tribal style, another big and famous Californian Tribal Belly dance company where she can findfound much innovation in sound and style to satisfy her need for a continuous evolution.
Gaia is now preparing the exams for the Unmata ITS language to become a certificated teacher, while also preparing new solos and choreographies for her Mandalance dance tribe and for herself as a soloist.
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She will be teaching in Indonesia, Central Java, Tegal from the 10th until the 16th of December 2018, hosted by Herna Maya Juliana Sagala, at BodyLite Studio.
certifications and workshops attended
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